Play in browser here -> https://4am.org/99/play.html

4xtx wrote on 2025-04-16, 13:43:

I got the inspiration from an early mobile game I used to play:

Nice, and thanks for sharing

i think some of the older mobile games make good candidates for this kind of project

nice to see old QB4.5 still being used too 😀

Nice. Enjoyable to play. You could make this into a captcha lol.

It's a really fun game, thanks for sharing! Makes me want to get back into QB again 😀

I've tried it on my Windows 98 PC with an ESS sound card; the Adlib option works perfectly, but the mouse doesn't do anything.

The only playability issue for me is that some colour pairs (particularly cyan/white) are very hard to distinguish. I guess that does add to the challenge, but it did make my eyes hurt after a few rounds.

sfryers wrote on 2025-04-17, 17:00:

It's a really fun game, thanks for sharing! Makes me want to get back into QB again 😀

I've tried it on my Windows 98 PC with an ESS sound card; the Adlib option works perfectly, but the mouse doesn't do anything.

The only playability issue for me is that some colour pairs (particularly cyan/white) are very hard to distinguish. I guess that does add to the challenge, but it did make my eyes hurt after a few rounds.

Thanks for the feedback!

You totally should pick up qb 😀 it was fun and frustrating all at the same time.

Are you using CGA or EGA? If EGA run the game without a timer and use ‘}’ key to randomly choose a palette. I’d like to know which ones don't play so nice. With EGA we can customise each color in palx.cga

For mouse I used CTMouse 1.4 driver during testing.
When the game starts you need to enable the checkbox for mouse and key over to save changes, then enter.

Also were you running from windows dos box or were you in real ms-dos mode?

keenmaster486 wrote on 2025-04-17, 15:22:

Nice. Enjoyable to play. You could make this into a captcha lol.

Ha! That’s a neat idea

gerry wrote on 2025-04-17, 13:34:

Nice, and thanks for sharing […]
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4xtx wrote on 2025-04-16, 13:43:

I got the inspiration from an early mobile game I used to play:

Nice, and thanks for sharing

i think some of the older mobile games make good candidates for this kind of project

nice to see old QB4.5 still being used too 😀

Cheers!

I agree, simple game mechanics and replay-ability make them a target. This is the 2nd one I’ve done (i did xyWords, a Wordscapes inspired game) a few years back.

4xtx wrote on 2025-04-17, 21:27:

Thanks for the feedback!

You totally should pick up qb 😀 it was fun and frustrating all at the same time.

The last time I did anything with QuickBasic was in 2020. I was inspired by an LGR video on Epyx's Rogue and had a go at creating a rough clone with similar text-mode visuals and procedural dungeons, but very much-simplified gameplay:

Are you using CGA or EGA? If EGA run the game without a timer and use ‘}’ key to randomly choose a palette. I’d like to know which ones don't play so nice. With EGA we can customise each color in palx.cga

That's useful to know- I've now gone through the different modes. For my eyeball and CRT combination, it's anything where the icon/background colour combo is either white/cyan or green/yellow. I tried taking some photos of the screen with my phone, but the phone camera actually improves the visual contrast a lot! [0 2 5 7], [0 3 5 7], [0 11 13 15], [0 11 12 15] and [0 19 14 12] are all difficult for me to see on my monitor.

For mouse I used CTMouse 1.4 driver during testing.
When the game starts you need to enable the checkbox for mouse and key over to save changes, then enter.
Also were you running from windows dos box or were you in real ms-dos mode?

That did the trick! I can confirm mouse now works fine in windows 98 dos box and real mode.

The last time I did anything with QuickBasic was in 2020. I was inspired by an LGR video on Epyx's Rogue and had a go at creating a rough clone with similar text-mode visuals and procedural dungeons, but very much-simplified gameplay:

Roguish.zip

Thanks! I'll check it out 😀

That's useful to know- I've now gone through the different modes. For my eyeball and CRT combination, it's anything where the icon/background colour combo is either white/cyan or green/yellow. I tried taking some photos of the screen with my phone, but the phone camera actually improves the visual contrast a lot! [0 2 5 7], [0 3 5 7], [0 11 13 15], [0 11 12 15] and [0 19 14 12] are all difficult for me to see on my monitor.

I implemented a small update to the EXE and to CONFIG.DAT to accept NoHiPals%=1 to force selection of Pal 1,3,5 (Low Intensity CGA Pals).
I've provided a zip with the new exe and updated palx.cga (its just a text file) for your setup.
For now you can go into settings and uncheck the "EGA Custom Palettes" to see how the standard low intensity palettes work for you with the updated palx.cga.

I tested the game on my XT w/ Real CGA and while I think the colour intensities look good, other people at my house had the same opinion as you on the "light" color mixes. ... maybe it's because I operate my standard rig with the high intensity color scheme I am just used to the jarring mixes of colours.

Something to think about for future work on the EGA 4-color modes!

4xtx wrote on 2025-04-18, 12:16:

I implemented a small update to the EXE and to CONFIG.DAT to accept NoHiPals%=1 to force selection of Pal 1,3,5 (Low Intensity C […]
Show full quote

I implemented a small update to the EXE and to CONFIG.DAT to accept NoHiPals%=1 to force selection of Pal 1,3,5 (Low Intensity CGA Pals).
I've provided a zip with the new exe and updated palx.cga (its just a text file) for your setup.
For now you can go into settings and uncheck the "EGA Custom Palettes" to see how the standard low intensity palettes work for you with the updated palx.cga.

I tested the game on my XT w/ Real CGA and while I think the colour intensities look good, other people at my house had the same opinion as you on the "light" color mixes. ... maybe it's because I operate my standard rig with the high intensity color scheme I am just used to the jarring mixes of colours.

Something to think about for future work on the EGA 4-color modes!

Thanks! I don't think this VGA adapter (VIA PLE133 w/integrated Trident Blade) is fully CGA-compatible; the most-difficult to see [0 2 5 7] and [0 3 5 7] palettes look exactly the same as before on my system.
I did try editing the palx.cga file this morning. I had a much better gameplay experience after overriding all the CGA modes with the [1|14|4|2] menu/ui palette- appreciate that this would break the game on a CGA-only system though.

I'd put aside some time today for retro-gaming, and (perhaps foolishly) thought I'd see if I could beat your game on the hardest settings. I did not anticipate just how long that would actually take! By way of a bug report, the on-screen timer wraps around some time after the 100-minute mark 😀

sfryers wrote on 2025-04-18, 15:11:

Thanks! I don't think this VGA adapter (VIA PLE133 w/integrated Trident Blade) is fully CGA-compatible; the most-difficult to se […]
Show full quote

Thanks! I don't think this VGA adapter (VIA PLE133 w/integrated Trident Blade) is fully CGA-compatible; the most-difficult to see [0 2 5 7] and [0 3 5 7] palettes look exactly the same as before on my system.
I did try editing the palx.cga file this morning. I had a much better gameplay experience after overriding all the CGA modes with the [1|14|4|2] menu/ui palette- appreciate that this would break the game on a CGA-only system though.

I'd put aside some time today for retro-gaming, and (perhaps foolishly) thought I'd see if I could beat your game on the hardest settings. I did not anticipate just how long that would actually take! By way of a bug report, the on-screen timer wraps around some time after the 100-minute mark 😀

The attachment IMG_20250418_142419.jpg is no longer available

Wow - amazing job getting the Insane Quad board completed without clearing! Impressive.

I was able to replicate the timer display bug when it hit 109 minutes, it reset to the 10 minute setting.
Removed the lazy check code and wrapped a few CASE checks in place at the 10 and 100 minute mark to ensure a reposition occurs.
Looks like it's fixed it from this side atleast.

Thanks for the feedback!